


Three Weeks

by Violett92



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Don’t worry it has a happy ending, F/M, I don’t really think this counts as angst tbh, Identity Reveal, Made For Each Other, Slight Angst?, double reveal, these two just need to be loved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 11:20:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21968479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Violett92/pseuds/Violett92
Summary: A week after Paris’ masked villain’s defeat and the loss of their Miraculouses, Marinette decides it’s safe to tell her friends her identity.She only wishes she could tell Chat Noir, too.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Alya Césaire/Nino Lahiffe
Comments: 18
Kudos: 459





	Three Weeks

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, at least this one isn’t a 3-5am post! More like midnight, but it’s still better than my habit of writing through sleep-deprivation.

Marinette felt a void in her chest as she reached down, her fingers brushing lightly across her purse at her side. She hoped if she opened it, big, blue eyes would stare up at her with a little smile, but she knew the hope was a naive one. Tikki was gone. 

And so was Chat Noir.

It had been three weeks since the duo defeated Papillion. Three weeks since Tikki and Marinette were forced to say their goodbyes before the kwami took the earrings back to Master Fu. Three weeks since Marinette begged to know Chat’s identity, but all that came out when Tikki spoke were bubbles. She wanted to tell Marinette, but she couldn’t, and they didn’t have time to find another way. 

It had been three weeks since Marinette ran, breathless and choking on sobs, to Master Fu’s shop, only to find it empty. No furniture, no customers, no sign that anybody had been there in years.

After Hawk Moth’s defeat and the disappearance of Ladybug and Chat Noir, it didn’t take long for the world to realize their heroes weren’t coming back. Now that the villain had been defeated, Paris’ crimes were nothing the police couldn’t handle on their own. Plenty of civilians came forward, claiming to be Ladybug and Chat Noir, but Marinette knew in her heart they were lying. So did Alya, who fired question after question, ones she already knew the answer to from asking the heroes personally. 

“Marinette?”

Her head jerked up at the sound of her name. Alya, Nino, and Adrien sat patiently on her chase, the latter looking a little worse for wear. Adrien excused his exhaustion by saying he was taking his father’s arrest hard, but Marinette didn’t buy it. She’d seen Adrien after Gabriel Agreste’s arrest, and he’d looked  _ relieved _ to be free of the man. There was something else bothering him that he wasn’t sharing, but Marinette had too many of her own feelings to sort through without prying into Adrien’s. She felt so alone now that she’d lost Tikki, her constant companion, and Chat Noir, her closet friend, that she didn’t know where to go from here.

Marinette’s balled her hands into fists at her side to keep them from shaking. Chat Noir was her other half. They always found each other, and they would again. Some day. They  _ had _ to.

She took a shaky breath to steady herself. She thought of Tikki’s last encouraging words to her before her heartbreaking departure and felt a small fraction of the weight on her chest alleviate.  _ You’re Ladybug, whether you have the earrings or not. I believe in you, Marinette_. “I brought you three here to tell you—to tell you the truth. To tell you who I really am.” 

Nino watched her patiently, Alya’s eyes widened, and Adrien looked like he’d barely heard her. He was lost in his own thoughts, a frown on his beautiful face as he stared down at his right hand. 

Alya leaned forward calculatingly. “Marinette Dupain-Cheng, why do I get the feeling I know exactly what ‘who I really am’ means?”

Marinette was too afraid to answer. She wished Chat could be with her, standing beside her with his head tilted and a small, reassuring smile lifting the corner of his mouth. He’d grab her hand, squeeze it, and say something like, _“_ _ You can do this, Bugaboo. You can do  anything.” _

And the thing about Chat Noir that Ladybug—that  _ Marinette_—loved the most? He made her believe it. Chat made her feel like the two of them could take on the world and never,  _ ever _ lose. The two of them were a force to be reckoned with.

Marinette smiled weakly and fought against the burning behind her eyes. She wouldn’t cry until she was alone tonight, like she had every night since losing her partners, knowing she wouldn’t have Tikki to pat her cheek and tell her everything would be fine. She wouldn’t break down in front of her friends. She would be strong. “I’m Ladybug,” she whispered, more to herself than for them. Her eyes fell to her feet with a wince. “Or, well, I used to be.”

Nino choked, Alya gaped, and Adrien’s head snapped up so fast she thought his neck might snap. “No way!” Alya cried, shocked but not disbelieving. “This makes so much sense! Now I understand why you were always giving me private interviews, and why you chose me and Nino to be Rena Rouge and Carapace!”

But Marinette wasn’t listening, not really, because Adrien was stumbling to his feet with wide, tear-filled eyes, like his entire world had been flipped upside down with those two words. His trembling hands cupped Marinette’s face, and she was held captive by the intensity in his stare as his eyes flicked across her freckled cheeks, to her pigtails, across her shoulders, down her body, and back up to her eyes. 

“Adrien?” she questioned, her voice barely more than a whisper. The tears finally spilled down his cheeks as he wrapped her tight in his arms, and familiarity struck Marinette like a baseball bat to the chest. 

“I thought I lost you,” he choked. His hold tightened, and Marinette felt something in her break. She wasn’t sure how—maybe it was the lack of Miraculous magic to shield them, or just the feel of Adrien’s arms wrapped around her—but Marinette knew, without a doubt, that Adrien Agreste was her Chat Noir. “Plagg took the ring and he couldn’t tell me who you were and I—I couldn’t—I thought I’d never  _ see _ you again!”

Marinette wiggled to free her arms and tangled her fingers into his hair, scratching at the spots she knew would leave him putty in her hands.  _ Her _ hands. “ _Shh, Chaton_ , it’s okay. I’m here. You found me.”

Her eyes found Alya’s over Adrien’s shoulder. The blogger swallowed audibly. “If you’re Ladybug, does that mean he’s. . .” 

Marinette nodded. 

“And you two didn’t know each other’s identities?” Nino cautiously asked. He blindly reached for Alya’s hand and squeezed.

Marinette closed her eyes to fight back her own tears, but a few still fell when she finally opened them. “We were separated after the fight, and our kwami aren’t able to say the name of another Miraculous holder, so there was no way of finding each other when Tikki and Plagg had to leave.”

“I love you,” Adrien murmured, and Marinette melted further into his embrace. She’d heard those words from her kitty hundreds of times, but never from Adrien. It would take her a while to get used to the sound. “I love you so,  _ so _ much and I don’t tell you enough. I just—I had to say it. I  _ need _ you to know how much I love you. How much you mean to me.”

Marinette pulled back to look him in the eyes and cupped his jaw. She knew he meant it both in the romantic sense, and in the sense that her role to him was indescribable, a sentiment they both shared. They were each other’s other half. Creation and Destruction. Yin and Yang. They were meant for each other, in every sense of the word, and there weren’t enough words in the entire universe to describe that feeling. “I love you too,  _ mon Minou_. So much.” She pressed a small kiss to his nose, then his damp cheeks, and rested her forehead gently against his. 

Adrien squeezed her tighter. “I’m never letting anything take me away from you again.”

Marinette felt a soft giggle escape her for the first time since their final battle. “I don’t doubt that for a second.”

They would be okay. After all, they were partners.

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone’s looking for some good fics to read, I regularly bookmark my favorites of all time, like Heartstrings, and The Ladybugs And The Bees, etc. 
> 
> Trust me, it’s a good list.


End file.
